Linguistic Typology 2021; aop Matthias Urban* Red, black, and white hearts: ‘heart’, ‘liver’, and ‘lungs’ in typological and areal perspective https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2021-2081 Published online July 15, 2021 Abstract: On the basis of a sample of 424 languages or dialects, this article provides a typological-comparative investigation of designations for three major internal organs of the torso, the ‘heart’,the‘liver’,andthe‘lungs’. While colexification patterns are relatively unconstrained, the data show a skewing in morphologically complex terms: ‘heart’ and ‘liver’ often serve as head nouns in complex terms for ‘lungs’, but the reverse is rare. Another recurrent phenomenon is that two of the organs –sometimes ‘heart’ and ‘lungs’, but more frequently ‘liver’ and ‘lungs’– share their head noun, and are distinguished from one another by modifiers that refer to their most salient characteristics, as in Azerbaijani aɣ ǯiyær ‘white ǯiyær’ = ‘lungs’ and gara-ǯiyær ‘black-ǯiyær’ = ‘liver’. Having thus set the typological stage, I move on to discuss two different regions of the world in which such terms for ‘lungs’ and ‘liver’ have spread through language contact. This has happened in Eurasia, where the abovementioned pattern, which I call “explicitly dyadic”, was brought from Turkish to vernaculars of the Balkans and, most likely through Azerbaijani influ- ence, to languages of the Southern Caucasus. Similar explicitly dyadic terms, but based on a head noun meaning ‘heart’, also occur in the Andes, where they appear to have spread from Quechuan to Barbacoan languages. The evidence not only shows that ‘liver’ and ‘lungs’ form a “semantic dyad” in which designations make use of “opposed characteristics” in different regions of the world, but also that such des- ignations are salient and therefore prone to spread in language contact situations. I thank Bernard Comrie, Michael Daniel, Dmitry Ganenkov, Antoine Guillaume, Zaira Khalilova and Ilknur Yavuz for discussing aspects of the data with me, and the editors of this special issue and members of the Linguistic Typology editorial board for their thorough comments on earlier instantiations of this article. The responsibility for errors of fact or interpretation, as always, is mine, not theirs. Financial support from the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG – Project Number UR 310/1-1) is gratefully acknowledged. *Corresponding author: Matthias Urban [maˈthiːɐs ˈʊʁbaːn], Center for Advanced Studies ‘Words, Bones, Genes, Tools’, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany, E-mail: matthias.urban@uni- tuebingen.de Open Access. © 2021 Matthias Urban, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 2 M. Urban Keywords: Andes; areal typology; Balkans; calquing; Caucasus; heart; language contact; lexical typology; liver; lungs 1 Introduction The semantic and morphological structure of lexical items is among the many aspects of language that can be affected by language contact. This is nothing new and has been known to linguists for quite some time (e.g. Betz 1949; Weinreich 1953). Yet, as contributions to the present special issue and others such as Enfield (2003) show, it is only recently that areal-typological patterns in the lexicon and their genesis through language contact are being studied on a larger scale. Thus, it appears that we are now truly on our way towards an areal semantics (Matisoff 2004), with systematically studied data from a given region or even the world at large. Accordingly, it is not surprising that methods akin to those of sample-based linguistic typology are used to describe and evaluate relevant data (Gast and Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2019). Research in areal patterns in semantic and morpho- logical structure of lexical items is thus a sibling of the equally burgeoning field of lexical typology (see e.g. Koch 2001; Viberg 1984, and contributions in Juvonen and Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2016; Koptjevskaja-Tamm and Vanhove 2012; Vanhove 2008). In this article, which deals with designations for three major internal organs –‘heart’, ‘lungs’, and ‘liver’– in a typological and language contact perspective, I touch upon both interlocking fields of research. I begin in Section 2 with a discussion of colexification patterns in terms for ‘heart’, ‘liver’, and ‘lungs’.1 This section draws upon a systematic language sample for the world-wide assessment of the frequency and distribution of the possible configurations in which designations of the organs may be associated lexically. A major finding of research in lexical typology is that the same semantic associations between concepts tend to show up in various formal guises: they may be realized by colexification in one language and by morphologically complex terms in another. And, given the close association between synchronic polysemy and diachronic semantic change, they may be visible diachronically as lexical items change their meaning (see Urban 2011, 2012).2 As morphologically complex 1 I use the term colexification in a manner that appears to be becoming more and more standard in lexical typology, namely as a deliberately ambiguous cover term for polysemy and vagueness in broad studies where this relevant distinction cannot be readily made. The term is originally due to François (2008). 2 The term “semantic shift”, with the specific meaning with which it is used in the Russian tradition of lexical typology where it covers all three realizations (e.g. Zalizniak et al. 2012), also seeks to capture this insight. ‘Heart’, ‘liver’, and ‘lungs’ in typological and areal perspective 3 terms also play an important role in realizing the lexico-semantic associations among ‘heart’, ‘liver’, and ‘lungs’, this part of the lexicon fits squarely into this multidimensional web of associations. In Section 2, I will also work out more systematically a special dyadic relation between ‘liver’ and ‘lungs’ that opposes these organs along three major semantic axes. Then, in Section 3, I zoom in on one salient pattern in the sample which is found in Eurasian languages: some languages, principally of the Balkans, Turkey, and the Caucasus, feature terms for ‘lungs’ and ‘liver’ which are based on the same root, but which are distinguished by modifiers meaning ‘white’ for the ‘lungs’ and ‘black’ for the ‘liver’ respectively. This pattern appears to have spread in Eurasia to the Balkans and the Caucasus through Turkish and Azerbaijani influence. With this background, I discuss a likely case of structural borrowing from Quechuan to languages of the Barbacoan family in Section 4. In this case, the same opposition in color is involved, but the head noun as a simplex denotes the ‘heart’. Together, the evidence shows that such naming strategies are salient enough not only to recur in completely unrelated regions of the world, but also to spread through language contact in Eurasia, and likely also in South America. Section 5 provides a summary and general discussion. 2 ‘Heart’, ‘liver’,and‘lungs’ in typological perspective I will begin with a broad, sample-based assessment of the lexico-semantic asso- ciations between terms for ‘heart’, ‘liver’, and ‘lungs’. Data come from my own database of lexico-semantic associations (Urban 2012, 147 languages, 132 of which have complete datasets) and the Intercontinental Dictionary Series (IDS, Key and Comrie 2015,3 300 datasets, of which 278 are complete). This gives 447 datasets, 410 of which are complete. Because of overlaps between the databases, this amounts to data for 424 distinct languages or dialects. All data can be found in the supplementary materials. Both datasets are global in coverage, though the IDS data, reflecting the interests of its editors, are biased towards the Caucasus and South America. Data from North America come almost exclusively from the Pacific Coast; Africa is represented by only three languages, and Australian and Papuan languages are not covered at all. The sample of Urban (2012) is more balanced areally, but also not free entirely of biases. In sum, the sample used here is a mere convenience sample. 3 As archived at https://zenodo.org/record/4280608#.YMiWFkxCSUk. 4 M. Urban Table : Colexification patterns for ‘heart’, ‘lungs’, and ‘liver’. Languages exhibiting colexification may have alternative terms for specific organs. Cahuilla Polci Buin (South Kwoma Chukchi (Uto-Aztecan, (Afro- Bougainville, Papua (Sepik, Papua (Chukotko- California, Asiatic, New Guinea, New Guinea, Kamtchatkan, cahu, Nigeria, buin, Laycock kwom, Russia, Seiler and polc, in Urban ) Bowden chuk, Hioki in Cosper in Fortescue Urban ) ) Urban ) in Urban ) ‘lungs’ yávayna vaktarak muruge wopu, hiiriibu rətralɣən ‘liver’ yávayna mbatl turupa wopu pontə ‘heart’ súnil͂ mbatl muruge wopu, mesek linliŋ No. of lan- a b Remainder guages of this type in the sample aLitteral (nd.) glosses Anggor (ango) hutɨrɨ as ‘lungs or liver?’. If this were counted as a case of colexification the count would rise to . bIn Yay (bouy), tuaŋ is a term for “inner organs (the heart and lungs, sometimes including the liver)” (Gedney ). I have counted this term as colexifying ‘heart’ and ‘lungs’ only. Yir Yoront ngerr-lolt ‘lungs’, which is “given fairly consistently also for ‘heart’” (Alpher : ), was also counted. Many, in fact most, of the sample languages have distinct forms for the three organs. Other languages, however, group the organs together lexically (or “colexify” them) in different manners. As it happens, all five logically possible ways by which this may be done are attested. The patterns can be represented in a kind of Hjelmslevian semantic mini-map (Haspelmath 2003: 237; Hjelmslev [1943] 1969: 54), as in Table 1. Sampled languages in which all three meanings can be covered by a single lexical item are Kwoma and Khoekhoe (nama1264). In both, the relevant items appear to be autohyponymous (Becker 2002): they denote one organ –the ‘liver’ in Kwoma and the ‘stomach’ in Khoekhoe– specifically and the inner vital organs broadly. In both languages, there are additional terms that denote the individual organs narrowly. In their broad reading, relevant terms seem akin to English innards or offal.